The dynamic of policy processes on hydraulic fracturing: An international comparative research project (2017-2020)

Outline of the research

I am involved in an international comparative research project on the dynamic of policy processes on hydraulic fracturing. Theoretically speaking, the research mainly relies on the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Following previous research efforts but based on eclectic methods, the newspapers of several countries concerned with the extraction of shale gas/oil are coded according to a common coding grid. This research is innovative in that it is one of the rare ACF-based projects using a common methodological framework across several national or subnational cases. The results will allow the examination of the attitudes and behaviour of policy actors, dynamics of advocacy coalitions and resulting policy changes in the different cases. This project will lead to theoretical advances on the contextual factors of policy processes as well as a better understanding of the differences in policies on hydraulic fracturing around the world.

Description of the project

This project is led by Profs. Drs. Christopher Weible and Tanya Heikkila (University of Colorado Denver). Together with Prof. Dr. David Aubin (Université catholique de Louvain), I am responsible for the French case. The team is also composed of Bastien Fievet and Maximilien Plancq, master students in public administration and trainees at the Institut de Sciences Politiques Louvain-Europe. The French case is also cosupervised by Dr. Sébastien Chailleux (Université de Bordeaux).

At the Université catholique de Louvain, the project is supported by the ‘Fonds d’appui à l’internationalisation’.